WHY IS TRANSPARENCY IN SHORT SUPPLY?

Despite the well known benefits that sustainability can generate, hiding behaviours remain dominant. While some fashion brands and retailers are benefiting from their transparency efforts, hiding is still

commonplace.

The Hiding Reward Loop is still dominant despite the reputational risk caused by exposure. Does secrecy and silence pervade the whole global fashion system?

FEAR IS PERVASIVETo humanise our visual map, a journey along several steps of the global fashion supply system, our causal loop diagrams are complemented by evidence-based personas. Transparency is held back by a lack of TRUST. FEAR is often its immediate cause.

Aarav is a Cotton Farmer in India’s Yavatmal District. He lost his brother to pesticide poisoning a decade ago. While he often feels ill, Aarav is more scared about reporting his pesticide symptoms than experiencing them. Aarav fears it would hurt his employment opportunities. Instead, buying into (some would say deceptive) advertising claims, he now uses less pesticide hungry GMO seeds. Aarav is now crippled with debt and locked into a relationship with a seed supplier. Worse, a new pesticide demanding sucker pest has reared its ugly head. He’s trapped on the ‘pesticide treadmill’. The fast fashion brands that increasingly demand cheap cotton can’t help him. They have little idea who grows and harvests their cotton.

#didthiscottonharmafarmer

SCARED OF RETALIATION

Nazia is a Garment Worker in Dhaka, Bangladesh. If the poor working conditions and poverty wages weren’t enough to contend with, Nazia also suffers almost daily sexual harassment from her line manager. She is at the end of her tether. She desperately needs to earn a living, but she is scared to speak up. She tried talking to her HR Manager, but he also feared him. In fear of retaliation, Nazia also feels unable to file a formal complaint at her factory. If she tells her family, they wouldn’t let her out of the house. Nazia feels alone in her despair.

#didthiscottonharmafarmer #whomademyclothes

HIDDEN FROM VIEW

Saba is a Subcontracted Factory Worker also in Dhaka. Saba’s situation is even more precarious. She’s hidden from view. Nazia’s factory have sub-contracted work to Saba’s factory to meet unreasonable fast fashion retailer deadlines. As a young child, she shouldn’t have to work in dangerous conditions, but poverty leaves her little choice. She’s also too scared to protest. Some of her co-workers have just been fired for taking their protest to the streets. Saba fears there is no escape.

#imadeyourclothes

FEAR TO SPEAK UP

Clara is a Fashion Buyer for a well-known UK fast fashion brand. She is under immense pressure to undertake cost negotiation strategies that deep down she knows generate poor outcomes for people like Nazia and Saba. She’s beginning to feel extremely uncomfortable about her role and its consequences. But equally Clara doesn’t feel able to raise these troubling issues with her employer. After all, there are plenty of others who would love to replace her. Sustainability simply isn’t high on her fashion brand’s business agenda.

#howcaniraiseconcerns

MISPLACED TRUST

Emily is a Fast Fashion Consumer who loves nothing more than fashion shopping. An avid Instagramma, Emily doesn’t think twice of the need to buy lots and often. She needs to look good, right? At Uni she studied Marketing, but sustainability issues were hardly mentioned. While she hates the idea of people or nature being harmed, she trusts the brands she buys from. But how could she know her trust is misplaced? The fashion brands she buys from are silent where it counts - at point of purchase.

#haveyouearnedmytrust

ANGER AT BETRAYAL

Tara is a Responsible Citizen who tries to recycle as much as possible. Frustrated that hardly any of her clothes are recyclable, she regularly donates clothes instead. But her local textile charity box fails to state only 20% of donations end up being resold in a Leicestershire charity shop. Unbeknownst to Tara, many of her donations are sold for profit and end up in East Africa. When she learns their fate in a documentary, she feels angry - her trust has been betrayed. Why didn’t anyone tell her where her donations may end up?

#whydomydonationsendup

FEAR-DRIVEN POVERTY TRAP

Amos is a Second-Hand Clothes (SHC) Market Trader in Mozambique. Amos has a regular customer following. The quality of clothes however is ‘hit and miss’. When he forks out to buy a clothing bale, he hopes to get lucky. Sometimes he isn’t. Amos only just gets by financially. He would love to set up a fashion label but is aware of the irony. The flood of dirt cheap SHC puts a dampener on his start-up dreams. How could he generate sales when people can buy a pair of jeans for next to nothing?

#fashionpovertytrap

FEAR-DRIVEN POVERTY TRAP

#fashionpovertytrap

BEWARE REBOUND EFFECTSIn our report, we look at existing levers and their ability to enact positive change. Yet we must be mindful that levers may generate Rebound Effects. For instance, sustainable fashion is an attractive ‘pull’ mechanism. While sustainable purchases are better, this type of lever does not necessarily reduce consumption rates, a must if we are to successfully dematerialise our economy. Equally, take-back schemes often offer discount vouchers - to tempt more purchases.

BEWARE REBOUND EFFECTS RESTRUCTURE POWER DYNAMICSPower asymmetries are also evident in the global fashion system. According to network scientist Albert-Laszlo, a centralised hub-like arrangement is vulnerable.

Our report attempts to shift the system’s power dynamics towards a more distributed, less hierachical power arrangement.